In light of recent developments, not least, the announcement of Michael McGrath as the next EU Commissioner, it is timely to look again at the infernal plight of workers of conscience – those noble people who blow the whistle on wrongdoing, and who strive to keep a corroded system from descending further into the abyss. … Read more
So White Supremacist, U.S. Senator, Lindsay Graham, visiting Israel last week, called for nuclear Armageddon to be unleashed on Gaza. Apart from blatant attempts to curry favour with the genocidal regime in Israel, and his Far Right base back in the USA, Senator Graham must (one presumes) be aware that in January, only three months … Read more
In December the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) published a comparatively critical review of the government’s Budget 2024. Criticisms of ‘bad budgeting’ arose from the ‘lack of transparency,’ and the use of ‘fiscal gimmickry.’ IFAC defined the latter as ‘creative accounting techniques’ used to make the numbers ‘look more favourable than they are.’ The Irish … Read more
What is a ‘real country’? For the Irish, living as we do on a divided island, the question doesn’t have to be facetious. As a negative example, to try to land on a positive answer, Northern Ireland comes to mind. Wherever that congenitally deformed statelet ends up, its passage through the twentieth century will form … Read more
SYRIZA’s rise to power in 2015 created shock waves around the world. The international Left celebrated a victory that seemed unfathomable a few years earlier. Its electoral triumph gained even more attention than it otherwise would have, because the stakes surrounding it were exceptionally high. The Coalition of the Radical Left, as is the meaning … Read more
This piece is not intended to provoke. It is more a look at the way people’s minds are shaped, how people think, and how that is articulated towards others. I realized something was ‘ratten’ in the state of ‘Norn Ireland’ when I was about four. My half-brother of about six or so and I were … Read more
David Langwallner is a barrister working in the U.K.. He has written numerous articles for Cassandra Voices, and was a natural choice to speak to about the Julian Assange case, which shows every sign of drawing towards a dénouement in a London courtroom. Between Tuesday, February 20 and Wednesday, February 21, a strange scene played … Read more
Listen to the second half of this podcast on Patreon. Jim Sheridan condemns the Irish government for handing over the file on the Sophie Toscan du Plantier case to the French authorities, wondering whether we are ‘still an independent country.’ He argues that this should never have been done ‘over the head of the Director … Read more
Long ago I read a wry assertion that local government in Ireland is ‘central government locally organised’. The writer lamented that local authorities, especially county councils, have limited financial and other powers to provide local services and depend heavily on the financial largesse of central funds allocated by different government departments. It is different in … Read more
In mid-January, St. Petersburg’s governor, Alexander Beglov, stated in his blog that Russian soldiers returning from the frontlines “know what they are fighting for” after witnessing gender-neutral toilets in Ukraine. “These guys who saw toilets in schools where instead of two rooms, for girls and boys, there are three rooms – for girls, boys and … Read more